FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives EXPLAINED
It started with a conversation. Late 1949, Washington DC. Inside a quiet office at FBI headquarters, director J. Edgar Hoover sat across from William Kinsey Hutchinson, the editor-inchief of the International News Service. Two men from different worlds, one chasing headlines, the other chasing criminals, talking about America’s most dangerous fugitives.
Hoover wanted the public’s help. Hutchinson wanted a story. Out of that meeting came an idea that would change the way America hunted its most violent men. On March 14th, 1950, the FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives list was born. A roll call of killers, robbers, and escape artists so dangerous their faces would hang in post offices across the country.
The first name was Thomas J. Holden, a robber and gunman from the Holden Keating gang. He became fugitive number one on a list that would grow into an American institution, part law enforcement tool, part symbol of the nation’s fight against crime. Since that day, more than 500 names have passed across that list.
Some were captured in hours. Others vanished for decades. One man, Victor Manuel Gerena, stayed on it for 32 years. The list doesn’t rank them. There’s no number one. Each fugitive is dangerous in their own way. Each one a ghost the bureau wants to bring back to light. Over the decades, the list evolved with the times from post office walls to the front page of the internet.
In 1996, Leslie Isburn Roger became the first fugitive caught through the FBI’s website, surrendering at the US embassy in Guatemala City. By 2025, 537 fugitives have worn the title most wanted. Nearly all were found. Some dead, some alive, some walking in on their own. This is a snapshot of American crime decade by decade, name by name.
And behind every photograph, there’s a story. And in today’s video, we are talking about FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives as of November 2025. If you enjoy our videos, don’t forget to subscribe, hit the like button, and share your thoughts about today’s topic in the comments. It really helps the channel grow. Let’s begin. In the jungles of Colombia, where the lines between politics and crime have long been blurred, one man rose through the ranks of war and profit.
His name is Wiligas Palamino, born October 21st, 1981. A high-ranking commander in the National Liberation Army, better known as the ELN. For decades, the ELN has waged guerrilla war against the Colombian state. But in the modern era, its war chest hasn’t come from ideology, it’s come from cocaine. Villigas Palamino was one of the men who made that possible.
US authorities say he helped move tons of cocaine from Colombia to Central America, Mexico, and into the United States. Every shipment meant more money for weapons, more power for the ELN, and more blood in the hills of South America. To Washington, that made him more than a trafficker. It made him a narot terrorist, a man funding war through poison.
On February the 12th, 2020, the Southern District of Texas indicted Villigas Palamino on charges of narco terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, and international distribution. 7 months later, the US government announced a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture. But he didn’t run. He didn’t need to.
In the remote regions of Colombia, the ELN still holds ground. mountain strongholds where government patrols rarely go. There, men like Villigas Palamino move under cover of the trees, guarded by soldiers who answer only to them. On April 14th, 2023, the FBI added him to its 10 most wanted fugitives list, replacing the infamous Mexican drug lord Raphael Caro Cano.
Today, Wilagas Palamino remains free, a ghost in the jungle, wanted by two governments and protected by the organization he helped build. To some, he’s a revolutionary. To the United States, he’s a trafficker and a terrorist. Either way, his empire runs on one thing, cocaine, and the chaos it leaves behind. It was a hot August night in Silar, California.
The kind where the streets hum long after dark. August 15th, 2019. Outside the hair icon barberh shop, a man named Jabali Duma, 46 years old, stood near the door. Moments later, the quiet of the block was shattered by nine gunshots. Witnesses said the shooter stood about 30 ft away. Calm, precise. One bullet struck Duma in the head.
He died where he fell on the sidewalk of a neighborhood where life and death can meet. in seconds. The shooter, police say, was Omar Alexander Cardanas. Born March 23rd, 1995, raised in Los Angeles and known to investigators as a member of the Pierce Street gang. He was 24 years old at the time of the killing.
After the shooting, Cardinas ran. Detectives traced him to his car, but by the time the murder charge was filed in April 2020, he was gone. By September 2021, federal authorities charged him with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. The trail led south. The FBI believes he may have crossed into Mexico, hiding among family or friends.
Others think he could still be in Southern California, working quietly on construction sites, blending in, keeping his head down while his name sits on one of the bureau’s most notorious lists. On July 20th, 2022, the FBI added Cardanas to the 10 most wanted fugitives list, number 528 since the list began. He replaced Eugene Palmer, who was removed without ever being caught.
The bureau offered a $250,000 reward for information leading to his arrest. Today, the picture of Cardinas shows a young man with thick hair, a beard, and a stare that could pass for anyone’s neighbor, or a man who’s been on the run for years. The motive for the killing remains unclear. Maybe it was gang business. Maybe it was personal.
All anyone knows for sure is this. Nine shots fired outside a barber shop and a man who’s been running ever since. Omar Alexander Cardinas, wanted for murder. Armed, dangerous, and still out there. It was a quiet night at the Dunkin Donuts on Arendor Mills Boulevard in Hanover, Maryland. April the 12th, 2015.
Two workers behind the counter, Badrashkumar Chatanbay Patel, 24, and his wife Palak Patel, 21, a young couple from Virgam, Gujarat, India, who had come to the United States only months earlier, chasing the same dream as so many before them. But that night, that dream ended in blood. At around 9:30 p.m.
, surveillance cameras caught them walking into the back kitchen. They disappear behind a rack. Seconds later, Bad Kumar walks out alone. He turns off an oven, straightens up, and calmly walks out the door. When police arrived, they found Pak Patel dead, beaten and stabbed multiple times with a kitchen knife.
The kind used to cut bagels and pastries hours earlier. Detectives would later learn the two had been arguing. Palac wanted to go home to India. Bad Kamar wanted to stay. Minutes before she died, Palac had been on the phone with her family, telling them she was ready to come back. He overheard her. By the time officers reviewed the tape, he was gone.
He’d gone back to his nearby apartment, grabbed a few things, and called a cab. The driver said he seemed calm. Too calm. The ride took him north to Newark, New Jersey, near the airport. He checked into a hotel, paid in cash, and checked out the next morning. At 10:00 a.m. on April 13th, he was last seen at Newark Penn Station boarding a shuttle. Then nothing.
No confirmed sightings, no confirmed movements, just a trail that ends in one of the busiest transit hubs in America. His visa had expired. There was no record of him leaving the country. But with connections in India, Canada, and several US states, New Jersey, Kentucky, Georgia, and Illinois, investigators believe he may have slipped underground with help.
2 years later, the FBI added him to its 10 most wanted fugitives list, number 514 since the program began. A $250,000 reward was offered for information leading to his capture. Today, Badrashkumar Cetanbay Patel remains one of the bureau’s most enduring mysteries. A young man who vanished into the noise of a city, leaving behind a life, a body, and a question that still haunts investigators.
Where did he go? It started like a favor between friends. August 9th, 2016, Charlotte, North Carolina. 17-year-old Alejandro Rosales Castillo texted his former co-worker and ex-girlfriend Truk Quan Sandy Lleair saying he wanted to pay her back the money he owed. Sandy was 23, kind, responsible, and trusting.
She agreed to meet him at a quick trip gas station on Eastway Drive. That was the last time anyone saw her alive. Castillo worked at a Showmar’s restaurant where he’d once dated Sandy. After they broke up, he started seeing another co-orker, Arma Faster, 19 years old. That day, Faster drove Castillo to the meeting in a red Dodge Caliber.
But Castillo never meant to pay Sandy back. Investigators believe he forced her to withdraw $1,000 from her bank account, the last of her savings. Then he drove her out to a wooded area in Cabaris County, where he shot her once in the head and dumped her body in a ravine. A week later on August 17th, her body was found.
She’d been reported missing days earlier after her family couldn’t reach her. By then, Castillo and Feista were gone. They drove Sandy’s 2003 Toyota Corolla across the country, more than 2,000 m from North Carolina to Phoenix, Arizona. There, they abandoned the car near a bus stop. Then they crossed the border into Mexico, walking across at Nogalis.
captured on surveillance cameras but never seen again together. Feista would later tell investigators they hid out in Aguas Scalientes staying with Castillo’s cousins. After 2 months she said he disappeared one morning gone without a word. On October 20th, 2016, Faster turned herself in to Mexican authorities.
2 days later she was extradited back to the US, arrested near Houston, and charged as an accessory after the fact. She eventually posted bond and walked free. But Castillo, the boy who killed for $1,000, vanished into Mexico. He was charged with first-degree murder and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. The FBI added him to its 10 most wanted fugitives list on October 24th, 2017, number 516 since the list began.
A $250,000 reward still stands for any information leading to his capture. Today, Castillo would be in his mid20s, fluent in English and Spanish, last believed to be hiding in Aguas Scalientes or maybe Guanauato or Vera Cruz. He’s the youngest person ever placed on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list.
And somewhere south of the border, he’s still running from a promise, a debt that ended in murder. He came out of Marraai, Venezuela from a place called San Vicente. A barriio where crime isn’t whispered about, it’s part of survival. His name is Giovanni Vicente Mosca Serrano. Born February the 22nd, 1988.
To the people who fear him, he’s known as Gioani San Vicente. to law enforcement across Latin America. He’s one of the architects of chaos, a founding figure in the criminal network known as Tren de Aragua. The gang started behind bars in the infamous Tokaron prison where guards took orders from inmates. Moscara Serrano joined forces with Hector Nino Guerrero Flores, the gang’s top leader, and Johan Jose Romero, known as Johan Patrika.
What began as a prison syndicate became an empire of extortion, drugs, and death. Spreading across Venezuela, Colombia, Central America, and into the United States. Moscara Serrano became the network’s enforcer and trafficker, overseeing cocaine shipments that crossed borders and corpses that marked their path. Investigators say he controlled drug routes, murders, and kidnappings, moving money and power with the precision of a man who learned to rule from behind prison walls.
By 2024, the United States and Colombia had him in their sights. Both governments issued warrants for his arrest, accusing him of terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and supporting a foreign terrorist organization, the same organization he helped build from the ground up. His associate Joseé Enrique Martinez Flores, another highranking trendy Aragua leader, was captured in Colombia in March 2025.
Moscara Serrano wasn’t. He vanished into the same underworld he helped create. On June 24th, 2025, the US government sanctioned him and the FBI added him to its 10 most wanted fugitives list, replacing Francisco Javier Roman Bardales. He became one of the few Venezuelan nationals ever listed among the bureau’s most dangerous men.
The charges are clear, providing material support to a terrorist organization, international cocaine trafficking, and murder tied to organized crime. But his reach is murky. A man moving through jungles and border towns, shielded by a gang that now operates in over a dozen countries. The reward is high, the trail cold, and the danger real.
Giovani Vitente Moscera Serrano, a fugitive born in a prison world, running an empire without borders and leaving nothing behind but bodies and fear. In Honduras, power doesn’t always wear a uniform. Sometimes it hides behind a gang tattoo, a bag of cash, or a man who commands an army from the shadows.
His name is Yulan Adon Araga Kas, born February the 13th, 1982 in Honduras. To the FBI, he’s one of the most dangerous men in Central America, a drug lord, a rakateeer, and the alleged leader of MS13 operations across the country. For years, our Kaga Koreas built his empire through violence and loyalty, flooding streets with guns and narcotics and funneling profits north to gang members working inside the United States.
Investigators say he didn’t just fund MS13. He armed it, paid it, and ordered its murders. In 2015, Honduran authorities caught him. He was convicted of moneyaundering and illicit association, locked up in a maximum security facility near San Pedro Sula. But men like Ara Kuras don’t stay behind bars for long. On February the 13th, 2020, his birthday, he was taken to a courthouse in El Progresso, a small city about 28 km away.
The transfer broke every rule in the book. No military escort, no advanced notice. Minutes after he arrived, gunfire erupted. Two groups of men dressed as military police stormed the building. One brought in a fake prisoner, a decoy in handcuffs. The other carried a man wrapped in a black tunic, supposedly a protected witness. Hidden beneath that cloak were rifles and ammunition.
They opened fire, killed his guards, and vanished with their leader in a hail of bullets. Yulan Araga Koreas walked out of the courthouse and disappeared. For the next year, he remained a ghost until 2021 when federal prosecutors in New York unsealed an indictment charging him with raketeering, narcotics trafficking, and firearms offenses.
That same year, on November 3rd, the FBI added him to the 10 most wanted fugitives list, number 526 in its history. He replaced Robert William Fischer, the American fugitive removed for no longer meeting the bureau’s criteria. The reward started at $100,000, but the pressure kept building. By February 8th, 2023, the US State Department raised the stakes $5 million for information leading to his arrest.
The same day the Treasury Department sanctioned him, freezing his assets under Executive Order 13,581, marking him as a specially designated national, a global target under US law. The FBI devoted an entire episode of its Inside the FBI podcast to him, describing the hunt for the man who runs MS13 in Honduras.
Today, investigators believe he’s still there, surrounded by loyal gunmen, protected by a network of corruption and fear. But the message from Washington is clear. Yulan Adane Aruga Koreas is out there, and the world is watching for the moment when his power runs out. She called herself the crypto queen, a woman who promised to change the world and instead stole billions.
Her name was Ruha Plamenova Ignatova. Born May 30th, 1980 in Raa, Bulgaria. Smart, ambitious, fluent in the language of money and power. By her mid-30s, she had a PhD in law, a masters from Oxford, and a resume that glowed with success. But behind the polished accent and designer dresses was a con that would become one of the biggest financial frauds in modern history.
In 2014, she launched OneCoin, a so-called cryptocurrency that promised easy wealth and total security. Investors were told it would rival Bitcoin. Instead, it was a pyramid scheme, a digital mirage built on fake numbers and lies. People across the world, from China to Uganda, poured their savings into one coin.
When the truth came out, the losses reached into the billions. By 2017, the walls were closing in. Prosecutors in multiple countries were investigating. On October 25th, Ignatova boarded a Ryionaire flight from Sophia, Bulgaria to Athens, Greece, and vanished. She was supposed to appear at a onecoin event in Lisbon that same day. She never showed.
Her brother Constantine, later arrested and convicted for his role in the scheme, told investigators she might have been tipped off that her empire was about to fall. Since that flight, no one has seen her. In March 2019, a US indictment charged her with wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering.
Interipole issued a red notice and German prosecutors opened their own investigation. The FBI added her to the 10 most wanted fugitives list in June 2022, replacing Octaviano Huarez Cororo. A reward was offered, first $250,000, later raised to $5 million for any information leading to her arrest. Then came the rumors.
Reports out of Bulgaria suggested she never made it far. In 2023, the country’s Bureau of Investigative Reporting and Data, known as BIRD, published police documents claiming she’d been murdered in 2018, allegedly on the orders of Bulgarian organized crime figure Christopheros Taki Amatidis, the man suspected of hiding her after she fled.
According to the report, she was killed aboard a yacht in the Ionian Sea, her body dismembered and thrown overboard. No proof, no body, only whispers. In the years since, her fortune has been hunted through offshore accounts and front companies. Her luxury yacht, the Deina, sits as a symbol of her rise and her arrogance.
A UK court in 2024 even ordered a global asset freeze tied to her and her OneCoin associates. The FBI still lists her as alive, a fugitive who might be out there hiding under another name, face altered, living off the money she stole. Ruha Ignatova, the crypto queen. A woman who sold a dream, vanished into legend, and left behind one of the coldest questions in modern crime.
Did she escape with billions or die with her secrets at sea? He started on the slopes, not the streets. Ryan James Wedding, born September the 14th, 1981 in Thunder Bay, Ontario, was supposed to be one of Canada’s great winter athletes. He grew up in a family built around snow and speed.
His grandparents owned a ski resort. His uncle coached Canada’s women’s alpine team. By 15, Ryan was a national snowboard champion, winning medals around the world. In 2002, he represented team Canada at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, competing in the men’s parallel giant slalom. He finished 24th. Not the medal he wanted, but enough to make him a household name in Canadian snowboarding.
Then he walked away. When the cameras stopped rolling, Ryan Wedding traded the mountains for money. Back home in Vancouver, he enrolled at Simon Fraser University, hit the gym, worked nightclub doors, and drifted toward the easy profits of the West Coast drug trade. By 2006, police discovered what he’d built, a sprawling 6,800 plant marijuana grow operation, hidden on a suburban property called 18 Karat Farms.
Inside, a shotgun, ammunition, and over $10 million worth of cannabis. But wedding wasn’t there when the raid went down and prosecutors couldn’t make the charges stick. That brush with the law didn’t slow him down. He moved into cocaine trafficking, working with Iranian and Russian smugglers, expanding his reach across borders.
In 2008, he tried to buy cocaine from what he thought was a supplier, but it was a US federal agent. Convicted in 2010, he served 4 years in prison. When he got out, he disappeared into the drug world for good. By 2023, investigators say Wedding wasn’t just moving product. He was leading a transnational criminal empire. The US Department of Justice accused him of running a multinational cocaine ring linked to multiple murders, including three civilians, Jagtar and Harajan Sidu, a married couple killed in November 2023, and Muhammad Zafar
murdered in May 2024. Authorities say Wedding ordered the killings alongside another Canadian trafficker, Andrew Clark, who’s now charged with a separate 2024 homicide. The joint operation that exposed them, fittingly named Operation Giant Slalom, traced Weddings organization from British Columbia to Mexico, where he allegedly found new protection under the Sinaloa cartel.
Down there, they call him Elfe, giant or simply public enemy. In October 2024, his second in command was captured in Mexico, but Weddings slipped away once again somewhere between the resorts, the mountains, and the money. On March 6th, 2025, the FBI added Ryan James wedding to its 10 most wanted fugitives list. The 534th fugitive in the list’s history, replacing Alexis Flores.
The bureau calls him armed, dangerous, and extremely violent. A $10 million reward stands for information leading to his arrest. One of the largest ever offered for a Canadian fugitive. From Olympic athlete to cartel boss, it’s a story that begins in snow and ends in blood. Ryan James Wedding.
Once a national hero, now an international fugitive. A man who turned a life of speed into a lifetime on the run. In the mountains of Sinaloa, power isn’t written in ink. It’s carved in blood. His name is Fausto Isidro Medzah Flores, known in the underworld as El Chapo Eidro. Born June 19th, 1982 in Navajoa Sonora.
He rose from the streets to become one of Mexico’s most violent and elusive cartel figures. A drug lord, a killer, and the leader of Los Mazat Leos, a faction loyal to the Beltran Lever Cartel. He started young in the 1990s. Ma Flores worked for the Huarez cartel under Amado Curio Fuentes. The man once known as Elsenor de los, the lord of the skies.
When Curillo died during plastic surgery in 1997, the organization fractured. Mesa Flores didn’t wait around. He joined forces with the Beltran labor brothers, a decision that would shape his life and the violence that followed. He made a name for himself as a fearless hitman known for precision, discipline, and an appetite for war.
When cartel leader Aruro Beltran Lever was killed by Mexican Marines in 2009, many abandoned the organization. Mesa Flores stayed. He held his ground and soon became one of the last men standing in the Belran labor network’s northern front. Then came Tubboutama. On July 1st, 2010, near the border with Arizona, a convoy of cartel gunmen clashed on a dusty road outside the small town of Tubutama Sonora.
The battle pitted the Sinaloa cartel backed by Gent Noea against the Beltran Lever, supported by Los Zatus and Mesa Flores’s men, Los Mazat Leos. The fight left around 30 dead. When the gunfire stopped, 11 trucks were riddled with bullets, some marked with the telltale X, a code painted by cartel soldiers to identify their own vehicles in combat.
Locals described it as a war zone. The US border was just a few miles away. After that, Meza Flores became more than a name in the criminal world. He became a symbol of defiance. His crew, Los Mazat Leos, turned the regions of Guasave, Mazatlan, Los Motis, and Narit into strongholds. They trafficked methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana, sending tons of product north while waging open war with the Sinaloa cartel.
In April 2010, Mexican soldiers nearly caught him in the mountains near Schwah Sinaloa. The operation left two soldiers dead and 12 of Meza’s men killed, including his right-hand man, Omar Alonso Rubio, known as Elchante. Mezer escaped again. By 2013, the US government had taken notice. The Treasury Department froze his assets under the Kingpin Act, sanctioning Meza Flores, seven relatives, and three companies tied to his organization.
That same year, he was spotted at a youth basketball game in San Pedro Gaza Garcia, a wealthy suburb of Noevo Leon, sitting quietly among families watching the game. Then he disappeared. On February 4th, 2025, the FBI added Fausto Isidro Mets Flores to its 10 most wanted fugitives list, number 533 in history, replacing fugitive Donald Eugene Fields II.
The US State Department offered $5 million for information leading to his capture. To his enemies, he’s a ghost. To the people of Northern Sinaloa, he’s a name spoken in low tones. El Chapo Isidro, the man who outlived his bosses, outgunned his rivals, and built his empire in the ashes of those who fell before him.
And somewhere in the hills of Mexico, he’s still out there, armed, protected, and watching the roads that lead to the border. It began in a quiet Texas town. The kind of place where people know each other’s names and notice when someone disappears. That’s what happened to 5-year-old Noel Rodriguez Alvarez. He was born on February 2nd, 2017 in Texas.
Small and fragile, a premature baby with health problems that demanded constant care. a limp, vision issues, chronic lung disease. But instead of protection, he was met with cruelty. His mother, Cindy Rodriguez Singh, called him evil, possessed. Neighbors said she refused to feed or give him water so she wouldn’t have to change his diaper.
When he drank without permission, she’d beat him, sometimes with a ring of keys. By November 2022, Noel was gone. Cindy claimed she’d sent him to Mexico with relatives. But when investigators checked, there were no records, no relatives, no sign he ever crossed the border. What they did find was worse. A few months before her disappearance, Rodriguez Singh had applied for passports for all her children except Noel.
She’d also told her family she’d sold her son in a parking lot. By March 2023, her lies started to unravel. Police performed a welfare check at her home in Everman, Texas, and found inconsistencies in everything she said. Days later, her husband, Ash Deep Singh, withdrew thousands of dollars in stolen cash, and together they vanished, boarding a flight from Dallas Fort Worth to Istanbul, Turkey with six children in tow.
The search for Noel turned into a recovery operation. At the family home, authorities discovered a new concrete patio and discarded carpet that tested positive for traces of human remains. Cadaava dogs marked the site, but a full excavation turned up no body. The boy’s disappearance became one of the darkest child murder investigations in Texas history.
By October 2023, Cindy Rodriguez Singh had been indicted for capital murder, injury to a child, and abandoning a child without intent to return. Still, she remained missing, believed to be hiding in India, protected by relatives. On July 1st, 2025, the FBI added Cindy Rodriguez Singh to the 10 most wanted fugitives list, naming her one of the most dangerous fugitives in America.
A mother accused of killing her own child, then running halfway around the world to escape justice. It didn’t last. On August the 20th, 2025, authorities announced she’d been captured days earlier in New Delhi, India. Local police working with the FBI and Interpol took her into custody and extradited her to the United States.
Now she sits in a Tarant County jail, held on a $10 million bond, awaiting trial for the murder of her son. Back in Everman, the town built something to remember him. No’s Playground in Clyde Pitman Park. A place filled with laughter, swings, and sunlight. A small monument to a little boy whose voice was silenced long before his story was told.